Who’s winning the Ramadan UAE advertising race for consumers’ hearts?

June 6, 2018 10:04 am

In the digital world, numbers are everything. According to CMO magazine, data-driven marketers witness an increase in productivity by an impressive 57%. So, how can we utilize data to determine a winner of the Ramadan advertising race?

To answer this question, Forbes Middle East collaborated with Mintrics, a social video analytics platform, to build a leaderboard that measures brands and media companies’ performance this Ramadan.

Ramadan is the most anticipated season for advertisers in the MENA region. It’s the month when people connect more than ever, but not just with each other. They want to connect with their favorite brands and bond over their favorite shows. This causes a massive increase in social media usage.

Facebook alone witnessed an additional 57.6 hours spent by users in the Middle East and North Africa. So, each brand has to battle for consumers’ attention online. But deciding the winner of the race is usually guesswork. This year, we will let the numbers talk. It was found that instead of distancing themselves from advertisements as much as possible, users actually searched for advertisements on YouTube, according to Google’s research.

Capitalizing on this opportunity, brands utilize a plethora of tactics and strategies to stand out from the crowd.

Du Emirates used themes of togetherness and interconnectedness in its latest series of ads, while Orange Egypt included a star-studded cast accompanied by a catchy earworm and Zain, the Kuwaiti telecom mogul, chose a politically-charged and highly controversial ad.

This fierce competition for users’ attention prompts brands and their respective agencies to always try and outdo themselves compared to the previous season. And as Ramadan marketing campaigns get more creative and more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly hard to simply compile a list of the best and worst campaigns. Those lists could be highly subjective as they depend on the author’s personal analysis of the ad content. This leaves us with a hard question. How can we truly measure the effectiveness of Ramadan campaigns without hunches and guesses?

Hadi Khatib is a business editor with more than 15 years' experience delivering news and copy of relevance to a wide range of audiences. If newsworthy and actionable, you will find this editor interested in hearing about your sector developments and writing about it.

2018 Mediaquest Corp. All rights reserved. Reproduction of news articles, photos, videos or any other content in whole or in part in any form or medium without written permission from Mediaquest Corp. is prohibited.